Iowa Folks and Foxes Getting Along Just Fine
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — It used to be that Kevin Thomasson would flip on the back light and catch sight of them sauntering along the railroad tracks. Or maybe running through the backyard.
Then they started coming two, three, four, five at a time, barking, eating and playing on the Thomasson property. The area is suburban but not sylvan, and the houses are built close together.
But the red foxes still came.
“In the 35 years I’ve been hunting, I’ve maybe seen one red fox in the wild,†Thomasson said. “But to sit here in West Des Moines and see five running out in the yard, it’s unusual.â€
Actually, such sights are becoming more common. The fox, like the rabbit, raccoon, opossum and deer, has come out of the woods as the suburbs have moved closer to them.
Bill Ohde, a wildlife biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, isn’t surprised by Thomasson’s story. “It’s just a case of there being a good food supply on the edge of towns,†he said. “Most cities have huge rabbit populations, and you usually have small rodents in town too. I guess they learn a good thing when they find it.â€
Rabbits are key to a fox’s diet. A fox also will eat mice, voles, pocket gophers and birds, and grass, nuts and fruit--all available in town.
“They’re opportunist feeders,†said Ryan Powers, a wildlife specialist for the U.S. Agriculture Department. “They’ll also eat dead meat, carrion.†And, he said, they’ll bury food and come back for it later.
Whistling for Foxes
Though Kevin and Julia Thomasson are not surrounded by woodlands, their backyard abuts a railroad track with a large stand of trees and brush--an ideal wildlife habitat--on the other side.
When they moved in three years ago, Thomasson said, they would occasionally glimpse a fox, usually when they turned on an outside light. Or they’d see the tracks in the snow. Earlier this year, Julie Thomasson was cutting hair on the deck and throwing the clippings into the yard. A fox appeared, apparently attracted by the hair.
Later in the summer, Kevin Thomasson threw a couple of T-bones into the yard after dinner, and two foxes approached. Since then he has been tossing out table scraps most evenings, and the foxes keep coming, sometimes as many as five.
Now Thomasson gives a whistle as he throws out the food, and it won’t be long before a fox head rises over the tracks.
Though the DNR has no figures on Iowa’s fox population, Richard Bishop, chief of the wildlife bureau, said it’s evident the numbers are down from the 1960s and ‘70s. Mange took its toll, and then coyotes moved in, competing for the same food and occasionally preying on foxes.
“At the same time, we started to see increasing cultivation,†Bishop said. “We lost a lot of grass and alfalfa fields that provided pheasants and mice for red fox. . . . You get in some sections up there and it’s corn from one end to another with no fence rows, no habitat for mice.â€
As foxes move closer to town, people are becoming more tolerant of them. Once thought of as chicken thieves, they now are seen as valuable guards of the garden.
Ohde said he got a call this year from a resident who found a fox den under an older home in Wapello, on the Illinois border. Another resident called after catching a fox in a live trap that was meant to capture a raccoon.
“They wanted to let the fox go,†he said. “They had a big garden and always had problems with rabbits until the fox started denning up by the house. They were tickled to have the fox around there, so he let it go.â€
Thomasson, like the folks in Wapello, enjoys having his foxes around. He said he planted $100 worth of annuals last spring. “And the next day, they were all nibbled,†he said. “The rabbits got to them. But you know, I haven’t seen a rabbit around here in probably two months.â€
